The Sentry - By Robert Crais Page 0,14

were often owned by multigenerational gang families. They were run as legitimate or semi-legitimate businesses, but their primary purpose was so gang members could claim they were employed when making their appeals to judges and parole officers. Such businesses also served as clubhouses, drop points, and tax dodges to launder illegal gang income.

As the men crowded around Mendoza, Pike studied their faces. Most sported elaborate gang tats and shaved heads, which had replaced slicked-back hair as the homeboy style of choice. Pike knew that not all of these men would be in the gang. Most were, but a couple would likely be wannabes, and a couple more were probably just friends. Three of the men showed the grease and soil of work, but most of them had just been hanging around. Pike saw the man who had aimed his gun hand from the Monte Carlo’s back seat, but Gomer wasn’t among them. The man hugged Mendoza and lifted him from the ground. When other men made a joke of grabbing Mendoza’s cast, the back-seat man playfully pushed them away. Protecting his friend. Any of these people could have vandalized Wilson’s takeout shop, but Pike had no way to know, though he thought he knew someone who could help deal with the problem.

Pike scrolled the directory in his cell phone until he found the number, then dialed. A cheery young woman answered.

“Angel Eyes. May I help you?”

“Artie there?”

“Yes, he is. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Tell him Joe Pike is coming by.”

Pike drove to a small stucco house in a residential neighborhood east of Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Known by the people who lived there as Ghost Town, the streets were lined by modest homes originally built for African-American laborers during the thirties. Ghost Town had seen a slow gentrification in some of its neighborhoods, but not all, leaving a sad reminder of days gone past and dreams unrealized. But men like Father Arturo Alvarez were trying to change that.

Father Art was not a priest, though the women and kids in his care called him Father and blessed him with the love and respect of a man of God. Artie Alvarez was a murderer. He murdered his first and only victim when he was eleven years old—a thirteen-year-old Shoreline Crip named Lucious T. Jefferson, whose only mistake was pedaling a blue Schwinn bike past Artie’s house. Artie was brutally honest when he told the story of how and why he killed the boy, which he told often to elementary-school children, civic leaders, and business groups throughout the Southland. He spoke to kids because he hoped to change their lives for the better. He spoke to civic leaders and business groups to raise money to fund his programs.

The heat was merciless on an August afternoon the day Artie committed homicide. Artie, his two younger brothers, and baby sister were on their front steps, waiting for their mother to return from work as a housekeeper in Cheviot Hills. Their father was away, which meant he was doing time in Soledad Prison. Artie recalls that he and his siblings were bored, and making up lies about their father, entertaining themselves by pretending he was a larger-than-life outlaw instead of a drunken bully with mild retardation from huffing too much paint thinner and glue. Artie and his siblings had reached a lull in the stories when Lucious Jefferson pedaled past. Artie’s baby sister, Tina, was on his knee when Artie saw Jefferson on the shiny blue bike. Jefferson wasn’t even looking at them. He was pedaling past, taking his time, and for no other reason than the rage in his heart, Artie called out—

“Get off our street, you Crip nigger!”

Jefferson, who, until this time, had paid no attention to the four children on the steps, flashed a gang sign and shouted back.

“Spic beaner! Fuck yo’ pussy ass!”

As Arturo told the story, he flew into a blinding rage that left him alone in the world. His two brothers and sister vanished. Thoughts of his mother, now only moments from home, vanished, and reason as civilized men know reason ceased to exist. He has no memory of pushing his sister from his knee, nor of her screaming when her head split so deeply on the step she would require eight stitches.

Artie ran into his house, snatched his father’s .22-caliber rifle from beneath his mother’s bed, frantically checked to see it was loaded, then crashed out of the house. He caught Lucious Jefferson a block and a half later where